What's wrong with us?

It’s worth remembering, as everyone bemoans the state of our politics, that our problem is neither new nor specifically American. It can’t be blamed on Trump, or on the machinations of the Koch brothers, or the financial crisis of 2008, or on Millennial narcissism, or even on the rise of inequality. It goes back before all those, and spreads wider. They are manifestations of a growing breakdown, not causes of it.

The starting point can actually be dated pretty accurately for the U.S.. Sometime around 1970, within a few years either way, confidence in the major institutions of industrial democracy took a sudden fall. A few years earlier, around 80% of the population had felt a good deal of trust in government, business, and unions; by the mid-70s, that number was about half that. It has bounced around a bit, but it has never reached anywhere near the old highs and keeps dropping again to new lows.

In western Europe the decline started later – largely in the 90s – but has followed a similar trajectory. In Scandinavia and Germany, the social-democratic consensus eroded; in the UK, Thatcher took a hammer to decades of Labour dominance. Trust in government declined significantly throughout the region. There has been no steadily rising replacement for the old centers of confidence: the populace have oscillated unhappily among available choices, throwing out the incumbents almost every chance they get.

What can explain such a wide and deep disenchantment? It has to be something big. It’s not inequality, because it started before inequality took off. I would explain it in terms of the rapid growth of interdependence and interconnection after World War II that disrupted traditional ways of life and broke down long-standing patterns of status and deference. From one point of view, the period since the 1950s has been one of enormous expansion of opportunity for minorities, for women, for gays; from another, it has been a period of rising confusion and blurring of identity – for white males, to be sure, but also for everyone else. Formerly excluded groups have gained hugely in terms of formal rights, but they still feel excluded and subordinated. No one quite knows what’s up and what’s down in the social scene.

The disruption of social norms opens the way for demagogues who say they can make everything all right again by stopping the spread of diversity and closing the borders to outsiders. Again, this is happening throughout the industrial democracies: nativist populist parties are on the rise everywhere. There’s no quick fix. We need a progressive vision that most people can feel a part of, and that will take decades to build.